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Ginning Up the Fear Machine

We’ve all seen the Right Wing media talking heads going at
Sonia Sotomayor last week for “racism,” concocting the thinnest rationales
imaginable to do so.Small wonder
her Supreme Court appointment has the Right totally apoplectic, since Sotomayor
appears to be a strong voice for the common man and woman.The thing that never ceases to amaze is
how many racist tropes these knuckleheads manage to incorporate into their
cries about her supposed “racism.”

Even more repellent lines come out of some hypocritically
halfhearted condemnations of the assassination of a Kansas physician by
political media midgets who have spent an inordinate amount of energy whipping
up the Fox News crowd to know and hate Dr. George Tiller, who might otherwise
have continued to live and practice medicine at a women’s clinic in the Great
Plains.It was a truly naseating
spectacle to see Bill O’Reilly, who called out Tiller as an “evil” man for
performing legal abortions and who made references to “judgment day” awaiting
the doctor, excuse his own words and further condemn Tiller’s life and work—
immediately after his killing.

Hatred and intolerance is indeed alive and well in the
land of the free.We ignore it at
our peril.Hopefully, however, the
increased level of hateful speech on the Right is a sign of frustration at
losing sway over American politics.The Right must be amazed at how fast and how far the politics of
jingoism and division have fallen since the Bush years ended in January.But make no mistake, we haven’t nearly
seen the end of their public lashing out— or their followers violent
craziness.It would be folly to
pretend that one election has turned the Right into a gelatinous mass.I’m sure we’ll see more fallout in the
coming months.

The good news is that the more over-the-top the Limbaughs
and Liddys and their lesser chuckleheads are when they spout their nonsense,
the clearer their real goals should become to most Americans.They’re all about the traditional
divide and conquer scheme, plain and simple.Set off one identity group against another, call the
aspirations of one belief set antithetical to all other American ideals.Spread fear.Then, they isolate public figures who would have us talk
across political and racial lines.The Right calls us “elites” and unpatriotic. Limbaugh and Co work hard
to prevent us from seeing the common interests we share.

Hopefully, the time of the chuckleheads is on the
wane.But history isn’t ever a
straight line, even if it does bend toward justice.It’s worth remembering how hard we all had to work to raise
the flag of reality-based politics during the Bush years.That work remains, even as our hope
for real change rises out of the ashes of our economy in the wake of the new
laissez-faire era.

Meanwhile, we look for opportunities to show the greater
possibilities that can be realized when American politics looks more like
America.As wise and committed
jurists and political leaders from many backgrounds, both genders, and more
varied political perspectives join in rebuilding our country after the economic
pillaging it’s now surviving, we can hope to forge a stronger democracy and a
better common bond with which to move past the divide and conquer crowd.

Let’s
just hope we can get it together fast enough and work smartly enough to meet
the many challenges we face.We’ve
certainly got our work cut out for us rebuilding America.